Professional Portfolios

Plaxo, LinkedIn, and Google sites are three great web 2.0 tools that can be utilized for staying organized and up to date with your professional and personal life. Each site is a little bit different from the next and I think it is worthwhile to participate in all three sites. Plaxo is a nice site for managing all of your contacts on the many social platforms in use today. I imported many of my contacts onto my Plaxo site and now I can easily view the information from contacts of many different applications all in one place. Unfortunately my smart phone broke so I did not get the chance to link my phone contact information to my Plaxo site. As soon as I get a new smart phone I will sync its information to my Plaxo site. LinkedIn is a professional networking site where people can create a profile which details professional experience and then get connected with colleagues and potential employers around the world. Like Plaxo, LinkedIn allows you to import contacts to get connected. Having a profile on LinkedIn is an effective way to sell your skills to an employer and to stay connected with friends and members in your professional field. I do not have much information on my profile as of now but I plan creating a page that showcases my skills and experience and I look forward to connecting with others who are interested in physical education. Creating a professional website using Google Sites is yet another way to present yourself to peers in your industry and to those seeking employees. I think the best aspect of the Google Sites is that the site is completely your own, which means that is is highly customizable. You can begin with helpful design templates, add pictures, and create an unlimited number of  categories to display your interests and skills. I think the best thing to do would be to have an account on all three of the web 2.0 sites discussed and then link each one together. Each site offers nice capabilities for staying in touch with contacts and presenting yourself to the world as a quality professional. Having a resume in your documents on your personal computer just isn't good enough anymore. Now it is time to have your information readily available to those who need to see it.

Library Thing

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/TAH_____

Library Thing is a nice site for organizing all of your favorite books online. Finding titles and putting together your catalog is very easy to do. There are a couple of features on the site that I particularly enjoy. First, I like how Library Thing makes suggestions for other possible books that you might like. I also think it is great that when you add a book you can see all of the other people who have also added that book and from there you can check out the libraries of others who have reading interests that are similar to yours. Overall it is a great site for managing and expanding your reading library. 

Image Generator

 

 Image Generating technology is a creative and useful way to take a picture and and spice it up. I decided to use the site: graphics.imagetemplate.net. Choosing a magazine cover for my picture was was fun and I found the site to be very easy to use. I can see image generating sites being useful to business professionals looking to create a new ad or even a person who wants to send a nice card to a friend.

Podcasts

I searched the Podcast.com site and found an interesting podcast which dealt with the use of active release therapy to treat various conditions. I have interest in active release therapy because I trained at a facility for athletes where A.R.T. was used frequently to maintain proper function of the muscles for maximum performance. I was hoping that the podcast I found would get into the use of A.R.T. on many areas of the body but for now it seems that there is only one podcast that deals specifically with A.R.T. and carpel tunnel syndrome. Hopefully in the future the podcast expands on the use of A.R.T.. Podcasts are a nice way to stay current on what is developing in the world of kinesiology. I particularly like the fact that a podcast can be downloaded onto an ipod and listened to at almost any time, making them very convenient.

YouTube

This is a video of an Olympic lifter with the nickname of "pocket Hercules".  In this video he successfully performs a clean and jerk of 412.5 pounds, an amazing weight for a man only weighing 140.8 pounds. I love to train using Olympic lifts and while it might not seem so, the lifts are extremely technical which makes this video even more amazing.
YouTube is a great site. I use it for learning and entertainment on a weekly basis. I think it could be used as a fun way for a class to complete a video assignment related to Kinesiology.

Technorati

Searching the Technorati site was a bit disappointing for me. The reason I say this is because when I searched for the term "kinesiology" using the different search options the site came back with ZERO hits. I was expecting to find a long list of blogs that were centered around kinesiology or at least a few that had tagged the term somewhere, but there were none. I guess it is time for kinesiology lovers around the world to get more involved in the blogging world so that Technorati finds us during its next web crawl.

Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is an interesting site for creating and managing bookmarks. Instead of saving bookmarks on your computers web browser you save the sites online, making them accessible from any computer. The ability to access your bookmarks from any computer is the best feature of Del.icio.us in my opinion. I have not yet run into the problem of having so many bookmarks that I cannot keep track of them but I have wanted to access some of my bookmarks away from home and it wasn't possible. I can see the the tagging feature of Del.icio.us being useful to a person that has a large amount of bookmarks, as it would help them find what they are looking for quickly. Also, tagging would be useful to a visitor on another persons site for the same reason. At this point I feel that I have my bookmarks under control and I have memorized the web addresses to my most frequented sites making it easy to access them away from home. However, I think that Del.icio.us would be a useful tool for professionals interested social bookmarking in order to share information quickly and easily.

Web 2.0 Revolution Health

For my Web 2.0 award winner review I chose the first place winner from the health category. As a physical educator and coach being healthy is an important part of my life and my teachings. Revolution Health is a website that offers a comprehensive look at being healthy. The site covers medical conditions and ailments as well as exercise guidelines and cooking recipes. The site was easy to navigate and it was not totally covered with advertisements and links. The only part of the site I didn't like was the BMI calculator on the home page. The BMI calculator is not an effective tool in determining how healthy a person is just as the 2,000 calorie diet is not for everybody. Aside form that I found the site to be loaded with useful information that was easy to get into.

Google Docs

I can see Google Docs serving as a useful tool between myself and a colleague of mine on the baseball team. I create and teach the weight training program for the athletes at Monterey Peninsula College with the help of another coach. We take the athletes through different training progressions that last about 4 weeks a piece, with each 4 week set building on the last. In creating the workouts the assistant coach and I are continually communicating either via email or in person. We use excel spreadsheets to create the workouts and with Google Docs we could make changes and add suggestions to each workout without changing the original template, making web based communication more effective. This could be a great tool. We will give it a try.

Bloglines

I had no idea that a site like Bloglines was available on the web. I found it easy to link in any page that I wanted to follow and the format of the site made for simple navigation from tab to tab. Bloglines will save me a lot of time when it comes to checking all of my favorite sites for news or blog updates. If there is nothing new from one of my favorite blogs then I will be able to quickly see that without having to open a new tab or navigate away from my current page. Great technology!

Technology

Technology is growing faster than ever before and with it comes new capabilities in communication, education, and fun. People have the ability to stay in touch with one another no matter where they are on the globe. Students can utilize creative learning software and online libraries with seemingly endless amounts of information. Gaming enthusiasts can compete in online gaming communities using the web and games that are incredibly lifelike. The changes in technology have done some amazing things but I also think that technology has contributed to lifestyle changes that are not so favorable. From my observation the days of children playing outside until the sun goes down are nearly gone. Now children are immersed in video games and and minute by minute status updates to their social networking accounts. I believe that it is no coincidence that childhood obesity and diabetes rates are at all time highs. With the connectedness our current levels of technology bring us I also feel there is a degree of disconnectedness. Often times people attempt to solve problems or distribute information via email or web post. I am still a fan of a good old phone call, or better yet, a face to face meeting. Technology can be great but sometimes it is better to get out of your office chair and walk across campus or across the hall and truly interact with someone.

Social Networking

The creation of social networking sites like Facebook has done wonders for communication via the web. I have played baseball for many years and in doing so I have made some amazing friends. Facebook has allowed me to reconnect with many of my old teammates and coaches with a simple friend request. The ability to communicate on facebook through private message or chat has also allowed me to easily communicate with my professional team overseas without having to make expensive phone calls. In addition, when I am playing in Germany I can keep my friends and family updated on how everything is going. Fast, easy, and effective. One aspect of the social sites that worries me is the privacy. You have to make sure that you check all of your privacy settings to ensure that your important information is safe. It is a shame that there are people who navigate social sites looking to copy personal information for malicious reasons, but it is a reality. By checking your settings and adding only people you know, you will be off to a good start to protecting yourself and enjoying the ability to communicate globally at any time.

Emerging Technologies

The days of hand written letters and "snail mail" are almost over. With such technologies as emial, blogs, RSS feeds, and social networking sites like twitter and facebook it is no wonder people have ditched traditional forms of communication for the high speed alternatives. Isn't is time for schools and libraries to get on board? As technology continues to advance, communication on a vast scale is becoming easier than ever. People now have the ability to be kept up to date with the latest events or schedule changes 24 hours a day. Most of these new forms of communication are very easy to use and best of all the majority of them are also free! Technology has allowed students from around the world to earn a degree from their bedroom. With the invention of e-books it won't be long until you can get any book sent to you via the internet at any time. No more standing in lines to check something out and no more waiting for somebody to return a book for you to use. Sounds good to me.

Flickr

Being a first time Flickr user I found the site to be fun and I think it serves a great way for people to connect with one another. I never would have thought that there would be a social web community built around photo sharing alone. The tagging process in Flickr is very cool. Simply by searching for a keyword you can be directed to photos from users that included that keyword in their "tag". My posted photo was taken during a power outage in the middle of one of our games in Germany. Our lights were out for about 30 minutes but that didn't stop the camera guy.

Welcome!

     First and foremost I would like to thank you for visiting my blog site. I am a newcomer to the blogging community and I am excited to share my thoughts with anyone who is interested. My blog will be focused on physical education and, in particular, how it relates to a persons physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual well being. I would also like to explore the role of technology within the field. Thank you for coming and I hope we can expand on ideas together in the future.